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“The United States is where most drugs are sold.” The Mexican meth cooker is working at night, his face covered by a bandana, protection against both smoke and any sort of identification. “We know we do harm with all the drugs that go there,” he goes on as you watch one of his colleagues stir a huge blue vat and another documents amounts with a cell phone camera. Their arms and hands swirl in smoke, rising as if from a witches’ brew, “But what are we going to do? We come from poverty. If we were doing well, we would be like you, traveling the world or doing good clean jobs like you guys.”

by Evan Sawdey and Brice Ezell

The infamously cantankerous Sun Kil Moon frontman Mark Kozelek added yet another controversy to his name on 1 June 2015. While performing at London’s Barbican venue, Kozelek openly called out journalist Laura Snapes on stage, using misogynistic language—sadly, to the glee of his audience. Snapes later wrote about the incident for the Guardian. This incident no doubt triggered questions about just how much people continue to put up with Kozelek’s grouchy old man routine, particularly as it continues to rear its sexist and homophobic head. More interestingly, however, is the way in which his behavior plays into the immortal query in the realm of aesthetics: “Can you separate art from the artist?” Is it easy for people to make Sun Kil Moon’s Benji one of the most acclaimed albums of 2014 knowing Kozelek’s public persona?

by Evan Sawdey and Brice Ezell

Theoretically, if a work of art is bad, we will view or listen to it only once and never return to it again; after all, if it is truly bad, why would anyone want to spend additional time with it? Yet dozens of films fall under the umbrella of “so-bad-it’s-good”, where a film’s badness becomes the very reason why we enjoy it. From the terrible direction, performances, and editing of Tommy Wiseau’s The Room to the apocalyptic nonsense of Southland Tales, so-bad-it’s-good cinema offers moviegoers the chance to have fun at the expense of itself.

Launched into orbit aboard the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990, amid flurries of hope and hype, the Hubble Space Telescope promptly faltered. Rather than remaining locked on its celestial targets, it trembled and shook, quaking like a photophobic vampire whenever sunlight struck its solar panels. Opening its protective front door to let starlight in perturbed the telescope so badly that it fell into an electronic coma. Worst of all, Hubble turned out to be myopic. Its primary light-gathering mirror, eight feet in diameter and said to be the smoothest large object ever fashioned by humans, had been figured perfectly wrong.

by Evan Sawdey and Brice Ezell

Everyone has their favorites. That general rule holds true even for critics, with all their high-minded ideas about what art can be and their five-dollar words. Over time, it’s natural that some artists become Great Artists, those who never fail to get critics riled up every time they announce a new release. In the present day, artists such as Kanye West and David Lynch have culled rabidly devoted fanbases that will seemingly praise whatever they put out for the world to see or hear.